Luna Chronicals: The Beginning
by NovaSinopa
Summary: Leonard McCoy is a broken man, divorced and jaded. Luna Pike is broken woman, beaten into submission by life and its hardships. But you can fix what is broken, it might not be the same, you might not recognise it, but it doesn't mean it can't be beautiful. McCoy/OC Bones/OC
1. Chapter 1

**Luna's Chronicles: The Beginning.**

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or the affiliated universe. I've only got my bones, oh and my characters!**_

**Prologue: **Leonard McCoy is a broken man, divorced and jaded. Luna Pike is broken woman, beaten into submission by life and its hardships. But you can fix what is broken, it might not be the same, you might not recognise it, but it doesn't mean it can't be beautiful.

"_To look upon the vast expanse, the cluttered emptiness that is the universe, is to dream of marvellous creations too spectacular to imagine." C.D_

**Luna**, stared at the moon. With her eyes she traced the jagged edge of Tycho's crater, drowning in the dark expanse of the Maria, collapsing into Schroeter's Valley. She marvelled at the fine dusting of white powder, like ash. She could feel it on her fingers, rough yet downy like duck feathers. Sand with the smoothness of fine silk. She willed herself there. Pulled at the vestiges of her weary mind as she breathed in the stale air. Space, she'd always admired its chimerical beauty. The careful silence, pure and devoid. She wanted that, to be pure, untainted by the world and its calloused hands that clawed, grappled and struck. Beating at an already battered body till just a husk. Broken and barren. She allowed herself a longing sigh, her voiced cracked from screaming came out thrashing against her vocal chords like a burning snake, raw and animalistic. It suited. Eyes, pupils dilated with dirty chemicals, glanced haphazardly around her cage, too narcotized to linger on much for long. How long had it been? She couldn't even begin to think. Was this her home, ramshackle dust and cracking concrete, electric bars and rusting shackles. He said it was. She'd believed him before, when the fraudulent zeal of subservience had run thick like treacle though her veins. But it was diluted now by tolerance and clumsy preparation. The doctor in her analysed the effects. Somnifacient, inducing drowsiness, dilute, sleep is not achieved, effect may be nullified via adrenal response. Compliance, possibly adapted from the chemical properties of Centaurian slugs but additional consciousness and memory loss implies an offshoot of DFSA with heavy traces of Flunitrazepam, Date Rape. Nails bit into the meat of her palm as she tried to remember, they were long and bowed under the pressure. Calcium deficiency, possible anaemia. Localised throbbing in side, rib injury? She shook her head slightly, it could be more than that if whatever she was on dulled pain.

Footsteps. Heavy, but indistinct. The keen of wet rubber against glossed concrete as feet scrape against the floor. Getting louder, coming closer. He. She could feel her heart rate increasing, thrumming against the flesh coated prison that protected it. Adrenaline purging her veins of the muddied chemicals. Breath like rusty nails grinding like sandpaper across cracking lips. The creeping vines of deja vu ensnaring, this was patterned, a expected visit. Memories, bitter and faded like old photographs tore serrated fissures of clarity through a once fogged perception. She felt like she'd been drowning, clawing her way to the surface and had finally broken through. Violent images bombarded her senses, falsified words, trust, romance, lies, deceit, resistance, pain, drugs, imprisonment. Her body quaked and rattled against itself. Bones jarring against each other like rutting bucks, muscles clenching, skin screaming in protest. The taught itch of scar tissue and scabs.

Cold fingers, thin and skeletal pushed frantically at the decaying shackle. The rust bit into the skin of her fingers and ground against her wrist. Toes flexed against slimy ground, cracking against each other as the blighting sting of misuse faded from the limbs. Brown eyes hectically scanned the cell. Small, large enough that he would have to come in if she didn't respond. Muscles protesting she inched towards the furthest wall, shafts of moonlight falling like dead leaves on the floor.

Closer. He was closer now, humming, voice dank with alcohol.

"Bitch come." Order, a commanded she no longer felt complied to answer. It was intoned with heavy implication, she could imagine what. "I said come you filthy whore!" She shuddered under the weight of it, echoing off the walls of her mind. Still she remained. "Fucking useless bitch..." He fell into mumbles as the mummer of an electric field died away. She hadn't noticed it.

A step, another, two more and a shuffling squeak.

She couldn't remember the mechanism that had her on the other side of the door. It had been his hands on her neck, a flash of anger, white hot fury dripping onto her vision and then she was running. Catapulting into the hallway, bouncing of the wall. Leaving him cradling his face as he screamed her decimation from the floor of her cell, blood dripping from ruined fingernails, smudges across her cheek where she's brushed strands of rank hair from her eyes. Frigid air, bloody footprints painting a gravel drive, the electric thrum of a scanner. It glided by on a blur, too fast for her mind to grasp it. Heart pounding to the rumble of a hoverbike, a crescendo that clashed like brilliant lightening, bright and beautiful. Freedom.

**Isn't** it odd the way your life turns out. No matter how much you think things through, how much you plan, it never turns out exactly how you wanted it too. If you're lucky, it'll turn out for the better. But if you're not, then you spend the fourth consecutive afternoon drowning away your sorrows and what's left of your life at another deadbeat bar in the middle of nowhere. That's where life had found Leonard McCoy, 28, graduated medical student, surgical doctor. Ex country doctor now. His life had taken one bad turn after another in the past two months, first the death of his father, then the divorce, then the horrendous lawyer who'd left him with no option but to liquefy his assets and hand them all over to that vicious harpy of a wife, then the dismal, now he was homeless and to top if all off, like a succulent red cherry, the order to move off planet was looming over his head like a pack of vultures over a carcass, his carcass. All that belonged to him now were the clothes on his back, the small account he had the foresight to place under his own name and the PADD he was about to sign what was left of his pitiful self away.

Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy, sure its was the position most medical graduates dreamed of. To go where no man has gone before, in his opinion, where no man should go, space. Space, for Leonard McCoy, was nothing more or less of a death sentence. To place your self at the vulnerable mercies of an unexplored vacuum of untimely, and usually painful, death. It was the one place, other than back to her, that he really did not want to go. Yet here he was volunteering himself up on a rather rusted platter with a huge side order of come and get me. Yeah this was how he was going to die, alone on some far off planet, with some painful disease that turned his insides outside in a slow methodical manner. He could just see it. But what else could he do, where else could he go. No home, nothing to his name but a few meagre savings. He couldn't go back to his childhood home, he was ashamed of himself for having nothing as it was and the thought that she'd more than likely laid out some twisted foundations of hate and distrust into his family who were just waiting to berate him for a failed life and marriage were too ominous to ignore. Space was his only option.

He remember the first time is eyes caught the tattered poster, slick with grease rubbed of sleazy patrons as they stumbled into walls. Edges warped by the humidity, curling and yellowed. The cadet whose face was plastered against a back drop of space was the A-Typical security detail. The red uniform pristine even under the grime and gripe of age. The sweet nectar of adventure, tantalising honey on the tongue. Promises of new discovery and the beauty of space. Being the first to greet new civilisations, make a name for yourself discovering new antidotes. Solving the mysteries of science. A spiel warped and moulded to ensnare the young, too ignorant to see through the rose coloured glass. He had though, as soon as he'd set eyes on the wilted poster he knew it was sham, geared to pull you in and skewer your perception. At least he had common sense on his side, he had thought, and turned away. That had been when he was still working, on the cusp of divorce with high hopes for his future. Then he'd been stripped of his belongings, ripped from a home he'd saved to buy. Crumpled and thrown against an alley wall homeless and drunk, dismissed from a profession he'd spent years of his life to achieve. He'd spent the next few weeks begging for work, moving from practice to practice. They refused his submission as a doctor due to inexperience, he was left to tend to the elderly that were to stubborn or too frail to leave home. Even they looked at him unsure, 'No offense son but I'd don't want a youngen' fiddlin' with ma innards.'

He trundles from safe house to safe house, sleeping with the homeless, never thinking he was one of them. He'd taken to drink, the merger savings wasting away like his life. It was now, now in the muddling arms of drink that he had looked on the poster with new eyes. The smiling bright eyed cadet with a future, a future that looked easier to chew than this purgatory. So he'd pulled out the dilapidated PADD, intent on signing away his life. Letting out a sigh he signed it.

One good thing, at least now he understood that old cliché phrase 'goodbye cruel world'.

**The **cold light of morning glinted off the skeleton of the Enterprise. It was beautiful. In the first stages of construction, it pertained of things to come. A new future. Nothing held more true than this for the two doctors who were to board the small crew shuttle that would take them to Starfleet Academy.

It had been a year since the incident, a year since she'd come home. Recuperation they had called it, it hadn't seemed that way. Her contact had been limited at first. They said she needed time to adjust to think through what had happened. But she didn't want to think about it, she never wanted to think about it again, that though, was an impossibility. Every day had been an effort to push it to the back of her mind, to remind herself of where she wasn't and where she was. Months of are you okay, you can tell me anything, and I understands had almost driven her crazy. The coping mechanisms they gave her, counting down from ten, clenching fists, counting the seconds in between her breaths were next to useless. Instead she pushed herself into self defence classes, forcing herself to learn how to stop it ever happening again. Physical contact was easier if you knew how to incapacitate someone. Not to say she was cured, but it was easier.

Her career had been another outlet. They had been nervous at first, hell she'd been nervous at first, of being allowed back with patients, but it'd helped more than hindered. Being back in the setting she'd spent her life training for allowed her imagine it'd never happened. But it had. In those moments she wasn't broken, or scared, she could be herself again. So when it came to applying for Starfleet 9 months down the line she'd been supported by her family, father and God-father, they were all she had left now, and was accepted despite her traumatic past.

She was still nervous. Standing on the edge of the shuttle door. She was hesitating. This was a completely new life she was about to lead, no one would know of her past, they'd kept it out of the news. She'd specifically asked for no special treatment, no therapy sessions, except the compulsory ones all cadets had to go through. Nothing that would single her out. She even changed her last name. She wanted it to be as if she'd gone through with her initial plan on completing med school.

So here she was hesitating in a doorway.

"Look I don't want to get on it either, but needs must and you're blocking the doorway." The voice was rough, deep, with the tang of someone living in Tennessee. Rigidly she stepped into the shuttle, the man following quickly behind her. "Great, a bucket of bolts, names McCoy, Leonard McCoy." He nodded to her.

"Luna Pi...Peters." He seemed oblivious to her slip.

"Nice to meet you, do any of these seats have no windows?"

"The toilet has now windows." She glanced at him curiously and he nodded and moved in the direction of the toilet, narrowly avoiding hitting his head against the frame work. Strange, did he fear plummeting to their death too, pockmarked by warped metal and shards of bone, wreathed in flames that lick the skin from muscle. She had a morbid imagination. Moving down the shuttle, she was unconsciously aware that her height negated the need for ducking. She pulled herself into a seat, centre row, away from the other cadets, a seat either side.

Glancing round, the first thing she noticed was red. In fact almost everyone in here, bar a rather stern looking woman was wearing red, cadet red. She on the other had stuck out like a sore thumb in her civilian clothing. Pulling her jacket around her tighter she resigned her self to the fact she had no choice but to act like she was meant to be dressed like this. It was like the first day of school again.

Her mocking memories of childhood that had been wreathed in laughter and security were interrupted. He was young, face bloodied but handsome, docked with childhood, quick to smile. He was in fact smiling, brilliant blue eyes crinkled, dirty blond hair ruffled and mused. He looked like he hadn't slept the night before, she guess a bar fight, maybe?

"Never did get that first name." The woman opposite send him a glare. She had a face that portrayed exotic beauty, like a model. She'd tried to catch her eye and smile but smiling was difficult, painful grimaces though they were easy.

The mans arm brushed against her and she clenched into herself. Contact was fine as long as it was expected, she stifled the urge to glare at the man.

"-are you people deaf? I told you, I don't need a doctor, dammit! I AM A DOCTOR!" It was the same man from earlier, Leonard.

"You need to find a seat-"

"I had one in the bathroom Darlin', with no windows-" Luna smiled to herself.

"Sir, for your own safety siddown before I MAKE you sit down..." She watched as he took the only free seat, on her other side, glaring at the Officer.

"I suffer from Aviaphobia, 'case you don't understand big words, it means 'fear of dying in something that flies.'" Eyebrows raised, Luna congratulated herself on her detective work. At least she wasn't the only one fearing a mangled painful death.

Leonard glanced at her, with a nod of recognition. "I might throw up on you." The reticent sound of cadets shuffling in their seats filled the surrounding shuttle.

"I think these things are pretty safe-"

"Don't pander to me, kid: one tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirty seconds—solar flare might crop up and cook us in our seats—hell, some of the damn passenger are blue!"

Luna shuffled against herself, painfully aware she was sitting between two men watching their convocation like a ping pong match.

Nodding he continued, "Wait till you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shigles, see if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding—space is disease and danger wrapped up in darkness and silence."

"Well I hate to break it to you, but Starfleet operates in space."

"Yeah well, the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce, all I've got left is my bones. McCoy, Leonard McCoy."

"Jim Kirk." Jim glanced at her.

"Luna Peters"

The two men passed a flask between them. "You really going to throw up?" Kirk looked slightly worried.

"Maybe."

Her voice came out quiet, a mumble not meant to be heard. "I might too."

**AUTHORS NOTE:** As some of you can imagine I'm re-writing the chapter's I've done so it flows a bit better. If you have any creative criticism I would be grateful or even an opinion as to whether this is a better version than the former. I'm going to date the re-write so you know which chapter I've moved to next.

14/07/14  
Charlotte


	2. Chapter 2

_**Luna Chronicles: Head Injuries **_

_'**It** could have been worse'_ she spoke it in an unbroken mantra in her head, _'It could have been worse'_. Shifting her hand slightly she mumbled an apology to Jim as he hissed in pain. "Sorry, sorry...". He waved her off with a grin. She went back to her work, the cut was merely preliminary. Far less gruesome than the superficial coating of drying blood implied. She shook her head slightly, chuckling internally as she remembered what happened.

...

_"I might too." She pulled her coat tighter around her, she was more coat that woman at this point. It was overly large. Black and military, with a high collar. She was nervous, flying had never sat well with her and this was habit from childhood. The feel of taught material against her knuckles reassuring. Thrumming engines sent vibrations through the shuttle, rattling her harness. In her peripheral she saw Leonards knuckles whiten against the flask he was holding. In this moment she couldn't fathom why two people afraid of flying would volunteer to send themselves careening through space on a starship. Taking a shaky breath she looked over to Jim, vaguely aware he'd been attempting to distract them both. Regaling them with his night. Apparently he'd been flirting with the cadet opposite, said cadet snorted in disgust, apparently the flirting left something to be desired. Luna felt the rare tug of a smile, his pick up lines definitely left something to be desired. His night ending in a brawl and a signature to Starfleet. Wild night, god her mind could be sarcastic._

_"Why did you sign up?" It hung in the air between the three for moments as she struggled to find her voice. Fate interceded though._

_Watery vomit, smelling distinctly of Tennessee Whiskey sloshed against the seats and boots of the cadets too slow to avoid it. Jim had launched himself away from the liquid missile in what would of been a ten out of ten swan dive had it not been for the harness...or the steel support frame. The symphony of sickly disgust had turned into a cursing solo, curtsy of Jim. Seconds after the blood started flowing, a red rivulet cleaving his forehead in two._

_"I feel like my brain is bruised." She couldn't help herself, it was all too funny. Jims armature dramatics, Leonard constant apologies and the best part of all the utter disgust and shock plastered on the face of the cadet opposite. It was a modern day sitcom. The laughter bubbled in her throat, it was unfamiliar with disuse but she couldn't stop it and found she didn't want to when two baritones joined her. _

_The glares that had been directed at the tri were nothing more or less than deadly and that made it all the more hilarious._

_..._

She glanced at Leonard as she passed him the regenerator. He'd cleaned up, rugged clothes replaced by some spare scrubs. She glanced down at her own clothing. Jeans splattered by rusty blood, and a smattering of congealing puke that stained the fabric a bile yellow.

"Can you finish up, just the pain killer..." He nodded and vaguely gestured to where he had found the scrubs. As she slid the door to the locker room shut she was followed by the indignant yelp of Jim.

"OW!"

The space little more than closet with three tall lockers, one for the nurse and another the doctor on duty and the final containing the scrubs. Slipping of the coat she grabbed one blanking her reflection in the mirror. Short sleeves, not ideal, but she would cope. She removed the rest of her clothing methodically as she slipped the blue polyester over her form. It caught against the ruts of scar tissue, crinkling as she pulled it on.

The two of them were a right pair. Jim Kirk, she had learnt, was a drama queen. Moaning throughout the remaining flight that his brains were falling out, and other nonsense about his precious face. Leonard, on the other hand, had fallen into a grump after the initial apologise, opting instead to tell how to treat Jim like she didn't know what she'd been doing. It had taken 5 snarky comments before she'd threatened bodily harm and violently explained that she hadn't suffered through 7 years of medical school to not know what she was doing. He only grumbled then but quickly fell silent at her glare.

She could definitely see them being friends. Besides if being thrown up on and bled on while fearing for you life flying in a bucket of bolts didn't make a friendship, what did?

Brushing her hair from her eyes she walked back into the hanger medical bay.

"-Bones." _Bones? what did he mean bones?._

"What about bones? I don't think you hit your head hard enough to break anything Jim" She looked between the two men.

"It's his nickname." For a second she just stared, alternating between a triumphant looking Jim Kirk and a Leonard McCoy who looked as though he'd swallowed something wriggling and spikey, with an eyebrow raised and arms crossed in distaste. She couldn't contain it. It started as a smile, bubbled into barely contained laughter then full blown, doubled over guffawing. She could hardly see through her tears. Deep rich chuckles, the undertones of sunny afternoons, warmth of whiskey, the crackle of disuse, harmonized with her laughter, tones weaving together. Kirk glanced between the two of them with his own childish guffawing.

"Glad to see we're all having fun." She straightened instantly. "Cadet Kirk, at least you're relatively cleaned up." She watched as Pike glanced at the blood still staining his civilian clothes. "McCoy, Kirk your room assignments." He handed them each a PADD. "Now if you're done I have things to discuss with cadet Peters." She watched as they both glanced her way as they shuffled out the door.

"Is this a dad or a Captain moment." Her voice was still lilted from laughing.

"Can't I be both." He smiled at her, arms beckoning. Smiling she moved towards him. "You made it princess, Starfleet. I'm proud of you." Pride coated his tenor as he stared at the young woman in his arms. Pulling back from their hug she lent against the biobed Kirk had vacated moments earlier. "So Jim Kirk, huh? He's a good kid, just...just be careful."

She sighed, "I will dad, I know."

He ruffled her hair and handed her a PADD, "Here's your dorm, you're on your own this year. The board thought it would be best to bring you in gently. Here's your panic button, press it and the nearest commander will respond along with a medical officer...just in case." She rolled her eyes and bit her tongue, recalling the conversation where she had insisted no special treatment. She wasn't made of porcelain. It was bad enough that she had to undergo the psyche test when they found out about her history, now this. They were determined to remind her that she was an emotion time bomb. Steeling herself she forced a grateful smile across her lips. _Think about something funny, think about something funny._

"Thank you."

"Well snap to it cadet, I will come check on you later." She watched as he walked away from her sighing, it sounded pitiful to her own ears. She fondled the panic button. It was small, inconspicuous and had a handy clip on for her ID card. It looked like a charm, something that nobody would ever suspect of being what it was. the design was of typical Starfleet origin, smooth and sleek. A frosted metal circlet surrounding a deep red indented button that looked like some sort of fake gem. Red. The colour just screamed panic. Sighing again she dropped it into one of the deep pockets of the scrubs, pushing away from the bio-bed.

Life moves on and so would she. Grabbing the clothing that were salvageable, she binned the rest and made her way to her new dorm.

Bathed in the golden light of afternoon the campus was beautiful. Buildings echoing 21st Century architecture hemming in a park full of maples and rock fountains. Students milled about enjoying the last of their freedom while they could. She walked slowly, the breezy air picking at her scrubs, head down scanning the campus map on her new PADD-

"Ow..." rubbing her nose she stiffed at the contact of steadying hands.

"Sorry, I...Luna?" It was Leonard, just Leonard. His hands were gripping her upper arms, fingers digging lightly into the muscle. She pushed against him instinctively and he dropped her like he'd been burnt. "Sorry."

Panicked grey eyes met concerned hazel as she backed from him with a stumble.

"Sorry I've got to...go." Turning, she left him there looking confused as she rushed in the direction of the girls barracks.

...

She felt like a fool, she'd panicked, she'd panicked and made herself looks as insane as she felt on the inside. As soon as her foot breached the threshold of her dorm she had swiftly moved to the bathroom crouching in the shower, washing away the memories that the unexpected touch had opened. The scrubs clung like a second skin, the feeling anchoring her as her mind raced. She hadn't had an attack like that for months. She'd sworn herself black and blue that she'd never have one again. But it was something, something about Leonard that was forcing her mind to relive it. He was nothing like ... him, and yet her mind was forcing her to relive through comparisons. His hands were cold, damp with sweat and grime, clammy with sweat, sticky with alcohol, rough manacles than clamped against soft skin till it bruised and puckered between thick fingers. Leonards were warm, calloused farm hands, gentle, steady, feather light, reassuring. They were not the same, so why was this happening. She curled further in on herself, the shower long gone cold, rivulets of water cascading from her hair into her eyes, running down her face like the tears she had no energy for anymore. She was being ridiculous. Leonard was nice, a possible friend, and she'd just as soon as jeopardise that as give it a chance.

"Water off."

Stepping from the shower she stared at the woman in the mirror. Bedraggled and pale she looked like a drowned sickly vampire. An uncontrollable urge made her bare her teeth at her self in the mirror. GRRR. Yep she was crazy, mental, broken beyond repair. Running round chasing the tail of her past self. Shaking her head at herself she listened to the droplets as they splashed against the tiling. She would need to apologise. Or she could just hope that they wouldn't bump into each other, no definitely needed to apologise. Resigning herself to her ridiculously complicated fate she dried herself off and moved into her room. It was large, two beds and two desks with a fabricator in the far corner and a window that turned into a holoscreen. When she had rushed in minutes earlier she knocked her suitcase o the floor and it laid at a haphazard angle against the bed.

A yawn bubbled up through her chest as the persistent flash of her PADD glared into the room. Snatching it from the place it had taken up on he floor she took note of the message. Admiral Archer. She was wondering when he'd want to see her. No time like the present she supposed. Steeling herself she walked towards the door, catching her reflection. Second thoughts she better get changed. Who knew that scrubs went see through when they got that wet?

**Note: **Second chapter finished, if you spot any mistakes I'd be grateful if you tell me.

17/07/14

Charlotte


End file.
